August 22, 2012 • 28 mins
In this episode, we revisit theories about the statues of Easter Island: the Moai. New evidence suggests that fewer than 20 people "walked" the Moai to their positions. This idea shakes up existing theories about the destruction of the island's resources.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair doubting and Chuck reboarding. And you guys know
that we really love a good historical mystery. It allows
for so much interesting discussion. I think, a discussion of
(00:23):
different theories, sometimes compelling one, sometimes less plausible sounding theories,
and then sometimes just completely lucky out their idea, which
I mean, I'm glad that we at least get to
mention those most of the time. But we're gonna be
talking about a historical mystery today. And since Judge explorers
first arrived at Easter Island in the seventeen hundreds, people
(00:45):
have wondered about the tiny, remote locations. Most startling feature
the gargantuan carved stone statues called moi, and in the
past people tended to focus more on how the islands
people got ar to this really really far out location
and who built the moai. So, for instance, the Norwegian
(01:06):
adventure tour hired all of Kantigie fame suggested that Peruvian
pre Inca came to the island and built these statues themselves,
and Swiss author Eric von Donnigen even thought that they
were built by aliens, you know, a classic catch all
for the most impressive building. Today, though most of these
(01:28):
questions are answered, interdisciplinary evidence points to the inhabitants coming
by boat from the Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific,
so the focus has been more on how these gargantean
statues were moved and what led to the populations collapse
pre European contact, and recently new information on both of
these points has come out questioning the predominant idea about
(01:50):
Eastern Island's darker history. It's environmental degradation and the MOA.
I pardon it, but before we give too much away here,
let's take listen to Candis and Jane's podcast from two
thousand and eight. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
editor Candis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Candis, Jane.
(02:11):
I think that if I could go any place in
the world, it would be Easter Island. Really, it's a
beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't. I've just seen pictures,
but it looks beautiful. I am kind of obsessed with it,
and I was looking at videos of Easter Island the
other day and I stumbled upon this fabulous piece of information,
and that is that Easter Island has its own marathon.
(02:32):
And now I love love running long distances. I love
half marathons and full marathons. And I'm very slow. I
won't profess to be the first line or even like
the eight hundred, but I don't think there'd be anything
cooler than running around the moai of Easter Island. And
it's not that big of an island. Actually, I was
looking at it. I mean I saw that it was
(02:53):
about sixty four square miles and that's about I mean,
just to see the point of reference, like, it's about
the same size is Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore,
it is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's
closest land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I
think there are other islands smattered around nearby, but not
too close by would be chilly. And that is about
(03:16):
two thousand two miles away. That's right. If you look
at a globe, it looks like just a tiny little
spook on the globe. And it's fascinating that people were
able to find it as early as they did. Yeah,
considering that these are the Polynesians who were not quite
sure where they came from, and we're not quite sure
why they left, whether there was some sort of dispute
(03:36):
the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted to
start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians are
such great sailors and navigators, they were able to make
it to this island. We know that they sailed and
wooden boats that were probably lashed together with reeds wrapped
really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a drift
in the ocean for about two weeks before they hit
(03:57):
land Easter Island, and that was around four a d.
And so you can understand how archaeological evidence can't really
indicate like what exactly motivated these people because they ended
up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, we're
(04:19):
not sure if they settled there because they had picked
it and they knew it existed and that was their
final destination, or if they were so desperate they thinked
any land that they could have seen, and regardless, they
actually came very prepared for for being ready to survive
wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of leafy
green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes and
bananas eline. Now, who doesn't love a sweet potato gosh um.
(04:43):
I think they also had a couple of chickens. And
again when they pulled up to Easter Island, I just
I can't imagine how they must have felt, because parts
of Easter Island were just gorgeous, a very verdant paradise.
I think that today archaeologists suspect that there may have
been at one time sixteen million palm trees, just you know,
an eden in the middle of the ocean. But the
(05:05):
part that they docked at was a less welcoming landscape.
And that's the thing about Easter Island, as tiny as
it is, this little triangle shaped island has very diverse
landscapes that has white sandy beaches, and then it has
this very jagged and forbidding cliffs, and it has a
volcano and volcanoes and palm trees. So who is what
they thought? But they set to task, and they did
(05:26):
pretty well. They cultivated the land, and they increased their population,
and they became a very sophisticated society. Yeah, and you
can see you how it was probably pretty hard at first,
especially because they brought most of their sustenance with them,
as we said, and what was actually on the island
itself before they came there was not much. There were
there were lizards, maybe an insect um, but but they
(05:46):
actually had to start from the ground up mostly exactly.
They were able to hunt dolphins and other types of
fish in the waters. But it's important to note that
Easter Island is not just remote as far as people
go and animals. Like you were saying, there aren't very
many nutrients in the water, or there weren't at that time,
and so not much could be sustained. So there were
birds that would pass over, and some people think that's
(06:08):
how it got to be such a verdant little paradise,
is that the birds would bring seeds that they deposited.
And this is actually a point of contention about like
how things got there and and um, etcetera, because some
historians claim, like we're trying to figure out where the
original people came from, and some historians claim, oh, these
people came from Chile, obviously, like that's the closest land. Um.
(06:28):
But when explorers eventually stumbled upon the island, the European explorers, uh,
a Polynesian on the ship was actually able to converse
with the people there, and so that's so they were
obviously speaking of variation on Polynesian. So they think the
people came from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all
about Easter Island all day, and if you don't know
much about it, you may be saying, okay, sure, So
(06:50):
it's a tiny little island, things are green, people came
from nowhere. Great, But the really important thing about Easter
Island is the mo I, and ultimately the Moi brought
about the height of the civilization. And then they're very
very darkest hour and the history of Easter Island not
(07:10):
just how they got there, because that part is interesting
in and of itself, but it gets so haunting and
it really gives me chills every time I think about it.
These people had a very specific religion and culture, and um,
their spirituality was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and
string figures and sculpture. And then they got to Easter Island.
(07:31):
The volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash
that was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made
these giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've
never seen a picture of them, I would encourage you
to look at the Easter Island Moi and what people
usually asso associate with Easter Islands these huge hits huge
And what I found interesting is that there actually found
(07:53):
other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
had the most sophisticated in the biggest and the most
incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
think they might have gotten bored and there was a
sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
(08:16):
two tons and stand up to thirty two ft high.
They were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't
have nacks, but they had these really long earlobes and
they were very stylized, and their features to their long
noses and their eyes are sometimes ornamented with coral or absitian,
but they look very phallic and perhaps archaeologists say that's
because the population was always struggling to reproduce, and they
(08:39):
were fertility gods. I believe they were. They were so
they could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
Speaking of which, because the population was so challenge they
had to inbreed. And so even to this day you'll
find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on each foot.
It's very interesting, and I guess it also probably stems
from the fact that they had a class system even
(09:00):
within this tiny island. Their population had a class of
like an upper class and a working class sort of thing,
and I imagine that contributed to separating how people bread.
I think so. And when it came to the moi,
this was such a manifestation of honor and spirituality. I
think everyone was a participant, no matter the class. I
don't know that for a fact, but I would assume
(09:20):
that people would come together and there was a very
specific process with creating the moi. The artist would start
in the quarry and start, you know, putting the rock
together and carving it down and chiseling it, and essentially
it would be sort of on like a little block
on the Tommey finished carving it, and they would create
these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there was
just like a tiny little sliver of stone that connected
(09:42):
the head to the quarry and this was the keel.
And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
the head on a series of of logs. We'd imagine,
and archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
heavy monoliths. Yeah, and it's it's sort of like the
stone hinge of Easter Island, because people are historians are
(10:03):
boggled by the fact how could these people have the
technology in the in the in the ingenuity, I guess,
to move these humongous structures. And that's like a huge
feat it is. And so people either imagine that about
seventy men got together and pulled them with ropes fashioned
from parts of trees, or else they laid them on
a series of logs in which two layers of logs
(10:24):
to be perpendicular to each other. They'd grease them with
palm oil and they'd roll them on a platform. And
I imagine this was such a painsticking process. I think
that it could take up to two weeks to move
the MOI important to them exactly. It was very important
to them because they put such labor into it, and
their final resting spot were on ahu or platforms, and
the moi faced inland towards the island. It was obviously
(10:47):
meant to watch over the residents and to protect them,
so they put these around the perimeter, right, it's like,
and so all of these all around the perimeter, we're
looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think over
the course of five years, about nine hundred of them
were car and you can see where the artists got
competitive because there were so many that were left unfinished
in the quarry and archaeologists found them later on um
(11:09):
ones that had a flaw maybe, or ones that were broken,
you know, whether in transit or whether in construction. They
were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were perfectionist.
This is, you know, how they were expressing their division
to the gods. And they got bigger over time too.
They started out more modest, and then there was one
that they call El Gigante, and it's so big. Of
(11:29):
course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly have
moved it. But here in lies the problem with what
they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go back
to how they transported them, they obviously can'd just suggested
that they were using logs and and it must have
taken a lot. And obviously they made a lot of
these moai, So they ended up cutting down a whole
lot of trees. And this ended up being their huge flaw.
(11:52):
They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
used it throwing cautious the wind, and today we sort
of think of trees as the most renewable resource there is.
But of course, like on that isolated island, they must
have just used up. No, you're right. When you're living
(12:13):
in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
and no matter how renewable it is, if you're not
getting any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
all the top soil on the island to wash away
because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
they were using the trees to make boats to go
(12:34):
out and fish for dolphins. And purposes. This is especially
said to me, it's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make boat
because they didn't have tree. And what's worse than that,
not only could they not fish, not only could they
not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
their island and all the trees were gone, they didn't
have anything left to make boats with to flee the
(12:55):
isand they were prisoners of their own making. And that's
when things got really dark and really dangerous. Paul started starving.
Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
that's true. And this is a point of contention because
some some historians, notably UM Jared Diamond says that these
(13:16):
Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after, like other food sources
dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
found in these pits of of garbage that where these
(13:39):
are the pits where they threw their their food trash
and so um. People like Jared Diamonds used this to
to say, oh, well, they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Other historians are like, oh, no, there's not enough evidence
to say that, and we shouldn't say that unless it's
unless for sure, and they say that maybe you know,
after people naturally died, they there were rituals that people
did with people's bones. We know that have and two.
(14:00):
So at the point of contention, so however you interpret
these relics of bones, you can look at the things
that are alongside them that the date to around the
same time, and you see that this is the first
time and Easter Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears
and arrows and things like this, so that there was
strive between the tribes were yeah, and we know that
when they came there were very very few of them around.
(14:24):
The population was somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand,
sixteen hundreds. That was the height of the civilization. It
was around ten thousand in population then. But then when
things started declining and population started dwindling, we see that
people broke off into different clans and essentially they were
all fighting for the very tiny parcels of arable land
(14:44):
that were left. And it was very, very difficult to
stake a claim to this because I think that the
Eastern Islanders they were respectful of their gods and they're
respectful of women and children. Even the scholars who point
the fact that they may have resorted to cannibalism point
out that women and children never watched this happen, which
I don't know if that means that men were the
(15:05):
only ones who resorted to cannibalism if they ate it
in private, away from women and children, but I think
that they, you know, they were still trying to hold
their civilization together, but it got harder and harder, and
finally there was this cult that rose out of all
the distress and was called the Birdman cult. And the
premise was pretty simple. Be the first person to grab
(15:26):
the egg from a city turned nest and you're gonna
be the leader for twelve moons. And that may sound
like a pretty simple feet, but the city turns nests
are in the highest cliffs on the islands. That would
involve like a swim and then rock climb and then
a massive truck back to be the first person to
have this egg. And if you lost this contest, it
was all that's off because the losers were typically expected
(15:49):
to stop themselves with spears. So the Barman cult does
sound pretty drastic, but through this there actually was a
rebirth and arable land end and cultivation of crops. I
think the sweet potato reared its head again, So I
think it's for tuvers. Yeah, and they were struggling. They
were they were still struggling to to um an extent,
and this is when you know, Europeans actually started stumbling
(16:12):
upon these people and they finally had sort of contact
and access to the outside world. But this ended up
causing a lot of harm as well as good um
because like obviously Europeans come uh with their own diseases
like that they have become immune to, and so they
exposed these diseases to the islanders at the time, and
(16:35):
so that hurt their population even more. And I think
that when the nineteenth century came around, the population had
dwindled to only gosh, just a little over a hundred
maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And not only did
the Westerners bring their diseases, they also brought their religion
or ideas. And one of the reasons that it's called
(16:56):
Eastern Island is because when it was first discovered, I guess,
just governed by Europeans, was that it was Easter Sunday.
And it's interesting and throughout the the I guess the
nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come over and start
and start converting the islanders um to uh, most of them,
I guess, and they ended up sacrificing a lot of
their culture, which is of course necessary when you sacrifice
(17:18):
um your religion. Right when the Christian missionaries came, the
exchange for giving up their religion and their culture like
their storytelling and their their tattoos and there everything else
was that they learned how to use their land to
be a ranch essentially, so they had livestock and they
were able to say, okay, so we have this very
treeless land. Now that's not good for much, but it
is good for using as a ranch. And at this
(17:41):
time the Easter Islanders, I think for the most part,
they were very wearied with their culture and when things
had gotten really dark, they turned to the Moai and
what and rather they blamed them, blame the gods for
what had befallen them, or whether they realized that it
was their own very overenthusiastic production of the sculptures that
(18:03):
brought them down and they started knocking them down, and
you know, like you said, like, we're not really sure
why it happened. I remember reading one theory was that
like when when the population split into different clans, one
clan would destroy those those statues because they believe those
were the source of their power of the opposite clans power,
and so there's all kinds of theories about this, but
(18:25):
um regardless, it is interesting that they made such amazing
feats and yet they ended up tearing it down. They did,
and you can see where they galuged at the eyes,
the name city and eyes, and they would arrange really
sharp stones underwear, the head would falls, and then when
they knocked from the yahoo the head with sever so
they were in essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't
(18:45):
until archaeologists came back and tried to restructure them that
they were able to rehoist the moai. And I think
that today the Easter Islanders very much accept that as
part of their culture. But another thing that they lost
forever was their language, which was wrong goo, wrong goo,
and it actually came about from a very dirty trick
(19:05):
that the Spanish pulled back in seventeen seventy two. They
came over and essentially they tricked the tribal leader into
signing a treaty that turned Easter Island over to Spanish control.
So while that in itself was not diplomatic to any extent,
it inspired the Easter Islanders to create their own system
of writing. And so there's still tablets today with wrong
goo wrong but that exists, and I think Easter Islanders
(19:27):
continue to carve these little symbols that no one knows
what it means, because again, part of giving up the
culture the Christian missionaries was getting you know, ranches established
and getting their crops re established and essentially surviving. So
they made that choice. That's interesting that both the introduction
of writing sort of hurt and helped them sort of
in a way like, uh, it's certainly a nasty trick.
(19:51):
Could be like, hey, this is what writing is. Write
anything on this line and you're sacrificing your island and
knowingly sort of thing. But if I also brought about
the faut at the Birdman cult to because the tribal
leader was able to reassert his power through riding. So
it's just such an interesting history and the Easter Islanders
are very very proud of their history. I think that
today there are maybe around two thousand people on the island.
(20:13):
Their population is really rebounded. Thankfully they have and they
have I think joint citizenship with Chile, so they can
go back and forth. And if you want to go
to Easter Island, I think that you have to fly
to Chile first, and then there are flights certain days
of the week that go out to Easter Island. And
that's what I mean. It's awesome that Easter Island has
has um an airport now and so people can come
and they like archaeologists can study and tourists can can
(20:35):
find out the rich culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah,
they had Chili actually has control over it because they
annexed it in eighty eight. We should probably mention that.
But the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The
people are incredibly friendly and I think that people have
written that as they've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel
rooms are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island
family in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So
(20:57):
it's just it seems like such a great place to visit.
I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
not dairs, someone comes, shake make please. Okay. So, now
that we have gotten all of the background on Easter Island,
Candice and Jane really did talk quite a bit about
that log roller theory for transporting the meli out of
(21:18):
the quarry, plus how that heavy use of forest resources
could have eventually led to the islands environmental collapse. All
these logs for the statues, no more trees, no more
comfy island. But last summer, a new study sponsored by
the National and Geographic Society and engineered by Terry Hunt
from the University of Hawaii and Carl Lippo from California
(21:40):
State University Long Beach, suggested a new possible means of transport,
and that is rocking and rolling, or more simply, if
you think about it, it's walking. How if you can
imagine one of these Easter Island statues just taking the stroll. Yeah,
So this walking idea probably sound a little funny, but
just bear with us. Last summer, the researchers demonstrated that
(22:04):
a five ton replica could be moved with a team
of eighteen people using ropes alone, by gently tilting the
statue back and forth, kind of shimmying it along this road,
taking advantage of its D shaped base, and it's a
big belly that allows for for total tilting, so that
unbalanced aspect of it actually works to their advantage. It does,
(22:27):
and and something similar was done back in nine six,
but at that point the statue wasn't allowed to take
advantage of that big belly and lean forward. It was
kept completely upright and it just twisted. So instead of
that shimmying or the tilting back and forth, it was
just twisting, and that ultimately damaged space. And they figured, okay,
this is not going to work. To really get a
(22:49):
good sense of this, it kind of helps if you
go watch a video and it's easy to find online.
We watched it before we came into recording, and it's
kind of it's kind of great to see one of
these eyes just moving down the road bit by bit,
but it is their striking looking. You have to wonder
how anybody thought of this in the first place. It
came about when one of Hunt's colleagues, Sergio rapp, who
(23:11):
who is an archaeologist and a member of the island's
indigenous population, took Hunt and Lippo to see all of
those abandoned moi that Candice and Jane mentioned and pointed
out the seemingly specially engineered features like the D shape
and the heavy belly, things that could allow these giant,
upright statues to, like you said, shimmy along the road.
(23:34):
But if this theory is correct and the moi were
not moved with logs, that still leaves us with the
question why was the island's forests so totally decimated well,
according to a National Geographic article by Hannah Block, Hunt
and Lippo have also excavated the island's beach and believed
that in habits arrived much later than earlier believed a
(23:56):
d and since this would mean the environmental degradation had
to happen at a faster pace, They've also suggested that
the trees weren't wiped out through slash and burn farming
or through rampant sledge and roller construction, but by rats
grows so Polynesian rats specifically, whose bones litter those same
(24:16):
trash heats discussed in the older podcast, and they would
have come aboard the very same canoes that the Polynesians
arrived in, and the inhabitants would have eaten them. You
know that Candis and Jane mentioned that they brought chickens along,
so um. They would have eaten the rats, but protein protein.
But with no other predators on the island besides the settlers,
(24:37):
the rat population could have quickly exploded, and the hungry
rodents could have gone gobbling up all of the palm
nuts and stopping new trees from growing. Because of these
forests are very slow growing and if the rats are
eating everything, you're not going to have any new forests.
And plus, of course they would also eat things like
bird bird eggs and further desks of mating the environment
(25:02):
of the island. Interestingly, Hunt and Lippo take things a
step further away from Diamond's poor stewardship theory by suggesting
that the islands people actually had a sustainable society. The
rats just happened to mess them up really badly. For example,
just some things that support this, they built stone wind
breaks to protect crops and soil. They also fertilized with
(25:25):
ash and rocks from the islands inactive volcanoes, and they
may have even been peaceful, which is a much different
idea from the predominant competitive, warring and eventually cannibalistic historical
telling of the situation, though some archaeologists like Rappoo think
that this is highly unlikely. I think that they probably
still did compete over these statues and eventually went to
(25:48):
war with each other. But I think what I find
most interesting is that the story works as an environmental
parable of sorts. Either way. One the diamond theory is
about land management and resources is the newer idea is
more about invasive species rats coming and messing everything up
for you and by a diversity and how fragile it
can be on on island like this. And what's neat
(26:11):
is is that both of those theories do still tie
into very timely topics today. I think it is neat,
although I was thinking about a lot. I know, I
wish we didn't have problems with them, but yeah, it's interesting.
And one more point, in case you're wondering, walking the
moi does not look easy. It's dangerous, but possibly to
the theories credit, there are loads of dropped moi on
(26:32):
the road between the quarry and the statues. So and
I'm wondering, especially if they were kind of a warring society,
what happened to those poor guys who dropped a moi
on the road. I didn't even think of that until
you just set up you'd have to be in big trouble,
I think. So it was really fun to learn a
little bit more about the story and find out that
(26:53):
people are still coming up with new theories about it,
and that they are so timely and rats are involved it.
I mean, I didn't really see that one coming when
I saw headlines about the mo i walked to their positions.
So anyway, if you want to learn a little bit more,
we do have the Easter Island article that Candice also wrote.
This was one of her favorite topics. I think I
(27:14):
actually updated her when I heard this news too, and
she was excited to know that that there's new ideas
about how the mo i got to where they were. Yeah,
and I mean, I guess we can look forward to
maybe more updates in the future really see how these
pan out. But if you have any stories to share
with us, or any suggestions about this topic or any
(27:35):
others that you want to hear, you can write to
us or a history podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
also on Facebook and we're on Twitter at mist in History.
And if you want to check out that article, it's
called how Easter Island Works and you can find it
by searching on our homepage at www. Dot hot works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(28:00):
is that how stuff Works dot com. M M
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair doubting and Chuck reboarding. And you guys know
that we really love a good historical mystery. It allows
for so much interesting discussion. I think, a discussion of
(00:23):
different theories, sometimes compelling one, sometimes less plausible sounding theories,
and then sometimes just completely lucky out their idea, which
I mean, I'm glad that we at least get to
mention those most of the time. But we're gonna be
talking about a historical mystery today. And since Judge explorers
first arrived at Easter Island in the seventeen hundreds, people
(00:45):
have wondered about the tiny, remote locations. Most startling feature
the gargantuan carved stone statues called moi, and in the
past people tended to focus more on how the islands
people got ar to this really really far out location
and who built the moai. So, for instance, the Norwegian
(01:06):
adventure tour hired all of Kantigie fame suggested that Peruvian
pre Inca came to the island and built these statues themselves,
and Swiss author Eric von Donnigen even thought that they
were built by aliens, you know, a classic catch all
for the most impressive building. Today, though most of these
(01:28):
questions are answered, interdisciplinary evidence points to the inhabitants coming
by boat from the Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific,
so the focus has been more on how these gargantean
statues were moved and what led to the populations collapse
pre European contact, and recently new information on both of
these points has come out questioning the predominant idea about
(01:50):
Eastern Island's darker history. It's environmental degradation and the MOA.
I pardon it, but before we give too much away here,
let's take listen to Candis and Jane's podcast from two
thousand and eight. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
editor Candis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Candis, Jane.
(02:11):
I think that if I could go any place in
the world, it would be Easter Island. Really, it's a
beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't. I've just seen pictures,
but it looks beautiful. I am kind of obsessed with it,
and I was looking at videos of Easter Island the
other day and I stumbled upon this fabulous piece of information,
and that is that Easter Island has its own marathon.
(02:32):
And now I love love running long distances. I love
half marathons and full marathons. And I'm very slow. I
won't profess to be the first line or even like
the eight hundred, but I don't think there'd be anything
cooler than running around the moai of Easter Island. And
it's not that big of an island. Actually, I was
looking at it. I mean I saw that it was
(02:53):
about sixty four square miles and that's about I mean,
just to see the point of reference, like, it's about
the same size is Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore,
it is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's
closest land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I
think there are other islands smattered around nearby, but not
too close by would be chilly. And that is about
(03:16):
two thousand two miles away. That's right. If you look
at a globe, it looks like just a tiny little
spook on the globe. And it's fascinating that people were
able to find it as early as they did. Yeah,
considering that these are the Polynesians who were not quite
sure where they came from, and we're not quite sure
why they left, whether there was some sort of dispute
(03:36):
the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted to
start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians are
such great sailors and navigators, they were able to make
it to this island. We know that they sailed and
wooden boats that were probably lashed together with reeds wrapped
really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a drift
in the ocean for about two weeks before they hit
(03:57):
land Easter Island, and that was around four a d.
And so you can understand how archaeological evidence can't really
indicate like what exactly motivated these people because they ended
up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, we're
(04:19):
not sure if they settled there because they had picked
it and they knew it existed and that was their
final destination, or if they were so desperate they thinked
any land that they could have seen, and regardless, they
actually came very prepared for for being ready to survive
wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of leafy
green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes and
bananas eline. Now, who doesn't love a sweet potato gosh um.
(04:43):
I think they also had a couple of chickens. And
again when they pulled up to Easter Island, I just
I can't imagine how they must have felt, because parts
of Easter Island were just gorgeous, a very verdant paradise.
I think that today archaeologists suspect that there may have
been at one time sixteen million palm trees, just you know,
an eden in the middle of the ocean. But the
(05:05):
part that they docked at was a less welcoming landscape.
And that's the thing about Easter Island, as tiny as
it is, this little triangle shaped island has very diverse
landscapes that has white sandy beaches, and then it has
this very jagged and forbidding cliffs, and it has a
volcano and volcanoes and palm trees. So who is what
they thought? But they set to task, and they did
(05:26):
pretty well. They cultivated the land, and they increased their population,
and they became a very sophisticated society. Yeah, and you
can see you how it was probably pretty hard at first,
especially because they brought most of their sustenance with them,
as we said, and what was actually on the island
itself before they came there was not much. There were
there were lizards, maybe an insect um, but but they
(05:46):
actually had to start from the ground up mostly exactly.
They were able to hunt dolphins and other types of
fish in the waters. But it's important to note that
Easter Island is not just remote as far as people
go and animals. Like you were saying, there aren't very
many nutrients in the water, or there weren't at that time,
and so not much could be sustained. So there were
birds that would pass over, and some people think that's
(06:08):
how it got to be such a verdant little paradise,
is that the birds would bring seeds that they deposited.
And this is actually a point of contention about like
how things got there and and um, etcetera, because some
historians claim, like we're trying to figure out where the
original people came from, and some historians claim, oh, these
people came from Chile, obviously, like that's the closest land. Um.
(06:28):
But when explorers eventually stumbled upon the island, the European explorers, uh,
a Polynesian on the ship was actually able to converse
with the people there, and so that's so they were
obviously speaking of variation on Polynesian. So they think the
people came from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all
about Easter Island all day, and if you don't know
much about it, you may be saying, okay, sure, So
(06:50):
it's a tiny little island, things are green, people came
from nowhere. Great, But the really important thing about Easter
Island is the mo I, and ultimately the Moi brought
about the height of the civilization. And then they're very
very darkest hour and the history of Easter Island not
(07:10):
just how they got there, because that part is interesting
in and of itself, but it gets so haunting and
it really gives me chills every time I think about it.
These people had a very specific religion and culture, and um,
their spirituality was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and
string figures and sculpture. And then they got to Easter Island.
(07:31):
The volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash
that was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made
these giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've
never seen a picture of them, I would encourage you
to look at the Easter Island Moi and what people
usually asso associate with Easter Islands these huge hits huge
And what I found interesting is that there actually found
(07:53):
other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
had the most sophisticated in the biggest and the most
incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
think they might have gotten bored and there was a
sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
(08:16):
two tons and stand up to thirty two ft high.
They were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't
have nacks, but they had these really long earlobes and
they were very stylized, and their features to their long
noses and their eyes are sometimes ornamented with coral or absitian,
but they look very phallic and perhaps archaeologists say that's
because the population was always struggling to reproduce, and they
(08:39):
were fertility gods. I believe they were. They were so
they could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
Speaking of which, because the population was so challenge they
had to inbreed. And so even to this day you'll
find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on each foot.
It's very interesting, and I guess it also probably stems
from the fact that they had a class system even
(09:00):
within this tiny island. Their population had a class of
like an upper class and a working class sort of thing,
and I imagine that contributed to separating how people bread.
I think so. And when it came to the moi,
this was such a manifestation of honor and spirituality. I
think everyone was a participant, no matter the class. I
don't know that for a fact, but I would assume
(09:20):
that people would come together and there was a very
specific process with creating the moi. The artist would start
in the quarry and start, you know, putting the rock
together and carving it down and chiseling it, and essentially
it would be sort of on like a little block
on the Tommey finished carving it, and they would create
these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there was
just like a tiny little sliver of stone that connected
(09:42):
the head to the quarry and this was the keel.
And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
the head on a series of of logs. We'd imagine,
and archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
heavy monoliths. Yeah, and it's it's sort of like the
stone hinge of Easter Island, because people are historians are
(10:03):
boggled by the fact how could these people have the
technology in the in the in the ingenuity, I guess,
to move these humongous structures. And that's like a huge
feat it is. And so people either imagine that about
seventy men got together and pulled them with ropes fashioned
from parts of trees, or else they laid them on
a series of logs in which two layers of logs
(10:24):
to be perpendicular to each other. They'd grease them with
palm oil and they'd roll them on a platform. And
I imagine this was such a painsticking process. I think
that it could take up to two weeks to move
the MOI important to them exactly. It was very important
to them because they put such labor into it, and
their final resting spot were on ahu or platforms, and
the moi faced inland towards the island. It was obviously
(10:47):
meant to watch over the residents and to protect them,
so they put these around the perimeter, right, it's like,
and so all of these all around the perimeter, we're
looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think over
the course of five years, about nine hundred of them
were car and you can see where the artists got
competitive because there were so many that were left unfinished
in the quarry and archaeologists found them later on um
(11:09):
ones that had a flaw maybe, or ones that were broken,
you know, whether in transit or whether in construction. They
were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were perfectionist.
This is, you know, how they were expressing their division
to the gods. And they got bigger over time too.
They started out more modest, and then there was one
that they call El Gigante, and it's so big. Of
(11:29):
course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly have
moved it. But here in lies the problem with what
they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go back
to how they transported them, they obviously can'd just suggested
that they were using logs and and it must have
taken a lot. And obviously they made a lot of
these moai, So they ended up cutting down a whole
lot of trees. And this ended up being their huge flaw.
(11:52):
They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
used it throwing cautious the wind, and today we sort
of think of trees as the most renewable resource there is.
But of course, like on that isolated island, they must
have just used up. No, you're right. When you're living
(12:13):
in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
and no matter how renewable it is, if you're not
getting any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
all the top soil on the island to wash away
because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
they were using the trees to make boats to go
(12:34):
out and fish for dolphins. And purposes. This is especially
said to me, it's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make boat
because they didn't have tree. And what's worse than that,
not only could they not fish, not only could they
not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
their island and all the trees were gone, they didn't
have anything left to make boats with to flee the
(12:55):
isand they were prisoners of their own making. And that's
when things got really dark and really dangerous. Paul started starving.
Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
that's true. And this is a point of contention because
some some historians, notably UM Jared Diamond says that these
(13:16):
Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after, like other food sources
dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
found in these pits of of garbage that where these
(13:39):
are the pits where they threw their their food trash
and so um. People like Jared Diamonds used this to
to say, oh, well, they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Other historians are like, oh, no, there's not enough evidence
to say that, and we shouldn't say that unless it's
unless for sure, and they say that maybe you know,
after people naturally died, they there were rituals that people
did with people's bones. We know that have and two.
(14:00):
So at the point of contention, so however you interpret
these relics of bones, you can look at the things
that are alongside them that the date to around the
same time, and you see that this is the first
time and Easter Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears
and arrows and things like this, so that there was
strive between the tribes were yeah, and we know that
when they came there were very very few of them around.
(14:24):
The population was somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand,
sixteen hundreds. That was the height of the civilization. It
was around ten thousand in population then. But then when
things started declining and population started dwindling, we see that
people broke off into different clans and essentially they were
all fighting for the very tiny parcels of arable land
(14:44):
that were left. And it was very, very difficult to
stake a claim to this because I think that the
Eastern Islanders they were respectful of their gods and they're
respectful of women and children. Even the scholars who point
the fact that they may have resorted to cannibalism point
out that women and children never watched this happen, which
I don't know if that means that men were the
(15:05):
only ones who resorted to cannibalism if they ate it
in private, away from women and children, but I think
that they, you know, they were still trying to hold
their civilization together, but it got harder and harder, and
finally there was this cult that rose out of all
the distress and was called the Birdman cult. And the
premise was pretty simple. Be the first person to grab
(15:26):
the egg from a city turned nest and you're gonna
be the leader for twelve moons. And that may sound
like a pretty simple feet, but the city turns nests
are in the highest cliffs on the islands. That would
involve like a swim and then rock climb and then
a massive truck back to be the first person to
have this egg. And if you lost this contest, it
was all that's off because the losers were typically expected
(15:49):
to stop themselves with spears. So the Barman cult does
sound pretty drastic, but through this there actually was a
rebirth and arable land end and cultivation of crops. I
think the sweet potato reared its head again, So I
think it's for tuvers. Yeah, and they were struggling. They
were they were still struggling to to um an extent,
and this is when you know, Europeans actually started stumbling
(16:12):
upon these people and they finally had sort of contact
and access to the outside world. But this ended up
causing a lot of harm as well as good um
because like obviously Europeans come uh with their own diseases
like that they have become immune to, and so they
exposed these diseases to the islanders at the time, and
(16:35):
so that hurt their population even more. And I think
that when the nineteenth century came around, the population had
dwindled to only gosh, just a little over a hundred
maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And not only did
the Westerners bring their diseases, they also brought their religion
or ideas. And one of the reasons that it's called
(16:56):
Eastern Island is because when it was first discovered, I guess,
just governed by Europeans, was that it was Easter Sunday.
And it's interesting and throughout the the I guess the
nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come over and start
and start converting the islanders um to uh, most of them,
I guess, and they ended up sacrificing a lot of
their culture, which is of course necessary when you sacrifice
(17:18):
um your religion. Right when the Christian missionaries came, the
exchange for giving up their religion and their culture like
their storytelling and their their tattoos and there everything else
was that they learned how to use their land to
be a ranch essentially, so they had livestock and they
were able to say, okay, so we have this very
treeless land. Now that's not good for much, but it
is good for using as a ranch. And at this
(17:41):
time the Easter Islanders, I think for the most part,
they were very wearied with their culture and when things
had gotten really dark, they turned to the Moai and
what and rather they blamed them, blame the gods for
what had befallen them, or whether they realized that it
was their own very overenthusiastic production of the sculptures that
(18:03):
brought them down and they started knocking them down, and
you know, like you said, like, we're not really sure
why it happened. I remember reading one theory was that
like when when the population split into different clans, one
clan would destroy those those statues because they believe those
were the source of their power of the opposite clans power,
and so there's all kinds of theories about this, but
(18:25):
um regardless, it is interesting that they made such amazing
feats and yet they ended up tearing it down. They did,
and you can see where they galuged at the eyes,
the name city and eyes, and they would arrange really
sharp stones underwear, the head would falls, and then when
they knocked from the yahoo the head with sever so
they were in essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't
(18:45):
until archaeologists came back and tried to restructure them that
they were able to rehoist the moai. And I think
that today the Easter Islanders very much accept that as
part of their culture. But another thing that they lost
forever was their language, which was wrong goo, wrong goo,
and it actually came about from a very dirty trick
(19:05):
that the Spanish pulled back in seventeen seventy two. They
came over and essentially they tricked the tribal leader into
signing a treaty that turned Easter Island over to Spanish control.
So while that in itself was not diplomatic to any extent,
it inspired the Easter Islanders to create their own system
of writing. And so there's still tablets today with wrong
goo wrong but that exists, and I think Easter Islanders
(19:27):
continue to carve these little symbols that no one knows
what it means, because again, part of giving up the
culture the Christian missionaries was getting you know, ranches established
and getting their crops re established and essentially surviving. So
they made that choice. That's interesting that both the introduction
of writing sort of hurt and helped them sort of
in a way like, uh, it's certainly a nasty trick.
(19:51):
Could be like, hey, this is what writing is. Write
anything on this line and you're sacrificing your island and
knowingly sort of thing. But if I also brought about
the faut at the Birdman cult to because the tribal
leader was able to reassert his power through riding. So
it's just such an interesting history and the Easter Islanders
are very very proud of their history. I think that
today there are maybe around two thousand people on the island.
(20:13):
Their population is really rebounded. Thankfully they have and they
have I think joint citizenship with Chile, so they can
go back and forth. And if you want to go
to Easter Island, I think that you have to fly
to Chile first, and then there are flights certain days
of the week that go out to Easter Island. And
that's what I mean. It's awesome that Easter Island has
has um an airport now and so people can come
and they like archaeologists can study and tourists can can
(20:35):
find out the rich culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah,
they had Chili actually has control over it because they
annexed it in eighty eight. We should probably mention that.
But the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The
people are incredibly friendly and I think that people have
written that as they've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel
rooms are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island
family in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So
(20:57):
it's just it seems like such a great place to visit.
I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
not dairs, someone comes, shake make please. Okay. So, now
that we have gotten all of the background on Easter Island,
Candice and Jane really did talk quite a bit about
that log roller theory for transporting the meli out of
(21:18):
the quarry, plus how that heavy use of forest resources
could have eventually led to the islands environmental collapse. All
these logs for the statues, no more trees, no more
comfy island. But last summer, a new study sponsored by
the National and Geographic Society and engineered by Terry Hunt
from the University of Hawaii and Carl Lippo from California
(21:40):
State University Long Beach, suggested a new possible means of transport,
and that is rocking and rolling, or more simply, if
you think about it, it's walking. How if you can
imagine one of these Easter Island statues just taking the stroll. Yeah,
So this walking idea probably sound a little funny, but
just bear with us. Last summer, the researchers demonstrated that
(22:04):
a five ton replica could be moved with a team
of eighteen people using ropes alone, by gently tilting the
statue back and forth, kind of shimmying it along this road,
taking advantage of its D shaped base, and it's a
big belly that allows for for total tilting, so that
unbalanced aspect of it actually works to their advantage. It does,
(22:27):
and and something similar was done back in nine six,
but at that point the statue wasn't allowed to take
advantage of that big belly and lean forward. It was
kept completely upright and it just twisted. So instead of
that shimmying or the tilting back and forth, it was
just twisting, and that ultimately damaged space. And they figured, okay,
this is not going to work. To really get a
(22:49):
good sense of this, it kind of helps if you
go watch a video and it's easy to find online.
We watched it before we came into recording, and it's
kind of it's kind of great to see one of
these eyes just moving down the road bit by bit,
but it is their striking looking. You have to wonder
how anybody thought of this in the first place. It
came about when one of Hunt's colleagues, Sergio rapp, who
(23:11):
who is an archaeologist and a member of the island's
indigenous population, took Hunt and Lippo to see all of
those abandoned moi that Candice and Jane mentioned and pointed
out the seemingly specially engineered features like the D shape
and the heavy belly, things that could allow these giant,
upright statues to, like you said, shimmy along the road.
(23:34):
But if this theory is correct and the moi were
not moved with logs, that still leaves us with the
question why was the island's forests so totally decimated well,
according to a National Geographic article by Hannah Block, Hunt
and Lippo have also excavated the island's beach and believed
that in habits arrived much later than earlier believed a
(23:56):
d and since this would mean the environmental degradation had
to happen at a faster pace, They've also suggested that
the trees weren't wiped out through slash and burn farming
or through rampant sledge and roller construction, but by rats
grows so Polynesian rats specifically, whose bones litter those same
(24:16):
trash heats discussed in the older podcast, and they would
have come aboard the very same canoes that the Polynesians
arrived in, and the inhabitants would have eaten them. You
know that Candis and Jane mentioned that they brought chickens along,
so um. They would have eaten the rats, but protein protein.
But with no other predators on the island besides the settlers,
(24:37):
the rat population could have quickly exploded, and the hungry
rodents could have gone gobbling up all of the palm
nuts and stopping new trees from growing. Because of these
forests are very slow growing and if the rats are
eating everything, you're not going to have any new forests.
And plus, of course they would also eat things like
bird bird eggs and further desks of mating the environment
(25:02):
of the island. Interestingly, Hunt and Lippo take things a
step further away from Diamond's poor stewardship theory by suggesting
that the islands people actually had a sustainable society. The
rats just happened to mess them up really badly. For example,
just some things that support this, they built stone wind
breaks to protect crops and soil. They also fertilized with
(25:25):
ash and rocks from the islands inactive volcanoes, and they
may have even been peaceful, which is a much different
idea from the predominant competitive, warring and eventually cannibalistic historical
telling of the situation, though some archaeologists like Rappoo think
that this is highly unlikely. I think that they probably
still did compete over these statues and eventually went to
(25:48):
war with each other. But I think what I find
most interesting is that the story works as an environmental
parable of sorts. Either way. One the diamond theory is
about land management and resources is the newer idea is
more about invasive species rats coming and messing everything up
for you and by a diversity and how fragile it
can be on on island like this. And what's neat
(26:11):
is is that both of those theories do still tie
into very timely topics today. I think it is neat,
although I was thinking about a lot. I know, I
wish we didn't have problems with them, but yeah, it's interesting.
And one more point, in case you're wondering, walking the
moi does not look easy. It's dangerous, but possibly to
the theories credit, there are loads of dropped moi on
(26:32):
the road between the quarry and the statues. So and
I'm wondering, especially if they were kind of a warring society,
what happened to those poor guys who dropped a moi
on the road. I didn't even think of that until
you just set up you'd have to be in big trouble,
I think. So it was really fun to learn a
little bit more about the story and find out that
(26:53):
people are still coming up with new theories about it,
and that they are so timely and rats are involved it.
I mean, I didn't really see that one coming when
I saw headlines about the mo i walked to their positions.
So anyway, if you want to learn a little bit more,
we do have the Easter Island article that Candice also wrote.
This was one of her favorite topics. I think I
(27:14):
actually updated her when I heard this news too, and
she was excited to know that that there's new ideas
about how the mo i got to where they were. Yeah,
and I mean, I guess we can look forward to
maybe more updates in the future really see how these
pan out. But if you have any stories to share
with us, or any suggestions about this topic or any
(27:35):
others that you want to hear, you can write to
us or a history podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
also on Facebook and we're on Twitter at mist in History.
And if you want to check out that article, it's
called how Easter Island Works and you can find it
by searching on our homepage at www. Dot hot works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(28:00):
is that how stuff Works dot com. M M
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